


Not Broken

by undercoverwarlock



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Character, Asexual Draco Malfoy, Fluff and Angst, Harry Potter is a Good Boyfriend, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:40:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24823963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/undercoverwarlock/pseuds/undercoverwarlock
Summary: Draco wanted this. Right? He had daydreamed about it, imagined what it would be like, wanted it. Right?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 34
Kudos: 264





	Not Broken

**Author's Note:**

> All characters belong to J.K. Rowling.

Draco wanted this. Right? He had daydreamed about it, imagined what it would be like, _wanted_ it. Right?

So why was he frozen in Harry’s arms? Why, now that the man he had been dreaming about was kissing him, was he unable to do more than stand there? Why was he having to think about moving his lips, had to force himself to remember everything he had read, everything he had seen, so that he could kiss this beautiful man like a normal person? What was wrong with him?

Maybe it was just that one time.

He laid awake that night, staring at the ceiling as car headlights passed across the shadows. He racked his memories as if they were the jumbled pieces of a puzzle to solve. The trouble was that he had never been the one to play the games the other kids played. No one was forcing him into a broom closet to snog someone for seven minutes, no bottles were being spun, no blind dates set up because so-and-so said that such-and-such liked him. He always found ways to side-step the situation. Sure, he fancied people, but since he only ever fancied boys, he learned to never mention it. Had to have a date to the Yule Ball? He asked a friend. Asked if there were any lovely young ladies in his life? He would smile and shake his head. And besides, after that night – a cruel face, a wand pressed to his forearm, splitting pain as he bit back the cries, cradling his arm to his chest as he tried to look proud, as if this was what he wanted – no one really asked him about his life, let alone his romantic interests. But now –

The war was over. He had a career. He had run into Potter at the Ministry and all those years of replacing attraction with hatred had tumbled back into his life. The two of them had a tense cup of coffee together, then another, then a pint, maybe a bottle of Firewhiskey. It had started as an attempt at healing old wounds. It became furtive looks, secret smiles, and sweet longing. So when Harry kissed him outside of his flat, Draco couldn’t understand why his body betrayed him. Didn’t he want to kiss him back? Didn’t he want this? Hadn’t he spent years denying himself this? Why couldn’t he respond in kind?

He turned over in bed, wrapping his long arms tight around his narrow waist. He could still feel Harry’s lips against his, the way his stubble had rubbed against his skin in the most delicious way, the smell of his cologne, black pepper and cedar. A distant voice in his mind whispered that yes, that did feel good. Yes, he did want to feel Harry’s arms around him, wanted to know what it would be like to fall asleep in Harry’s embrace, wanted to fill his senses with Harry, Harry, Harry. And yet, when the time had come, it had been like his body became a stiff marionette, and every touch was felt through layers of cotton wool. Something inside him had shut off. There was no instinct, no deeper need to push further. He knew what it was supposed to feel like, or rather, what he had been told that it would feel like. He liked Harry, he knew that. So why didn’t he want more?

The next time Harry kissed him, as they sat curled together on the couch in Grimmauld Place listening to the wireless after dinner, Draco tried to relax into it. But it was a repeat of the first time. His movements were mechanical, forced. He tried to focus on the feeling of it all – Harry’s hand against his cheek, the sweetness of his lips, the way he pulled Draco against his chest so easily. He wanted to melt against the warmth of him, to do all the things he knew would excite the other man, all the licking and nibbling and sucking he had heard and seen and knew _worked_. Yet it was so much effort just to remember to move his lips like so, to swallow, to breathe.

He pulled away. Harry kissed along his jaw. There again was that distant voice – that feels nice, he liked that, but what was he supposed to do? Even now, Harry’s touch felt like it was reaching him through several layers of clothing, as if he was simply imagining the whole thing rather than experiencing it in real time. He groaned in frustration and pulled away further, away from Harry’s wonderful wandering lips. And when those green eyes blinked at him, confused and slightly hurt, he felt he might as well have shoved Harry away.

“What’s wrong?” Harry asked, his voice rough from suppressed desire. Just the sound made Draco want to weep in frustration.

“I don’t know,” he managed to whisper through the knot in his throat. “I want this, but… I can’t… I don’t… it’s not working.” He buried his face in his hands, pressing his palms against his stinging eyes, because there was no way he was going to cry in front of Harry Potter. But then he felt Harry’s warm, calloused hands on his wrists, trying to pull his hands down. Then he was looking back into those green eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses, at the gentle face with its scar and freckles against cinnamon skin, and before he knew it the tears were rolling down his cheeks and there it was. He was crying in front of Harry Potter.

Harry pulled Draco into his arms with a gentle murmur of, “it’s okay, I got you, it’s okay.” He rocked Draco as he wept into his chest. Draco felt his lips press against the top of his head, the warmth of his cheek, the huff of breath against his hair. He tried to breathe, tried to swallow the sobs, but that distant voice in his head was saying – you’re broken, there’s something wrong with you, you can’t even do this basic thing – and the tears kept spilling down his cheeks.

“We can go slow,” Harry said as he held him. “We can figure this out. It’ll be okay.”

“I don’t know if it will,” Draco sobbed into his shoulder. He pressed his face against Harry’s tear-soaked shirt, against the solidness of him, breathing in the smell of black pepper and cedar. He wanted this, he told himself, he wanted this so badly. But wanting something wasn’t always enough.

Harry let him cry as long as he needed. He held Draco long after the sobs died down, brushed the hair from Draco’s tear-stricken cheeks, rubbed his back as his breathing slowly steadied. He held one of Draco’s hands against his chest so Draco could feel his heartbeat, so warm and immediate, just there beneath the surface.

“I care about you,” Harry told him, pressing another quick kiss to the top of his head. “That’s all that matters in my book. All I need is to know that you care about me too.”

Draco nodded. Harry’s heart beat beneath his palm, and he knew he was telling the truth. He could see the scars on the back of the other man’s hand – _I must not tell lies_. But that distant voice had other ideas.

“I think there’s something wrong with me,” Draco said at last. The hand rubbing his back paused for a moment. “I don’t…work like I should.”

“What do you mean?”

The hand resumed rubbing his back.

“I… I don’t have the same drive, the same instinct as everyone else, I think.”

“…Okay.”

“I know I should, and I want you, I really do.”

“I believe you.”

“But it just… I don’t work.”

“Because you don’t want more?”

“Because I _can’t_ do more.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t work.” Draco looked up at Harry, who squeezed the hand he was holding against his chest as he gave Draco a small smile. “It just means you work differently. That’s okay. Different is okay.”

The tears pricked at Draco’s eyes again, but he blinked them away.

“What about you?” Draco asked. “I don’t think… I don’t think I can do more, you know?”

Harry shrugged, Draco rising and falling against his chest. “What can you do?” Harry asked in response. “Touching is okay?”

Draco nodded.

“Kissing is okay?”

Draco hesitated, then shrugged.

“Can I touch you here?”

He let go of Draco’s hand to ghost up Draco’s thigh, to waver dangerously close to the bulge in his trousers. Draco’s breath hitched in his throat. He felt his heart stutter. But he also realised this was all anticipation – desire was strangely, quietly absent. Draco bit his lip. He wanted to want it, to want Harry’s hand to move closer, to want that friction, but all he felt was silence.

He shook his head.

Harry’s hand moved away. He covered Draco’s hand on his chest with his own again. He let out a sigh, and that awful distant voice told Draco that it was a sigh of disappointment.

“Okay,” Harry said at last. “That’s okay. We don’t need to. Maybe one day we can try, but if you don’t want to, we don’t have to. I’m willing to explore as much as you want to explore, and if kissing and touching are all you want to do, then that is all we will do. If you want to try more, we can. But we don’t have to. Okay?”

Draco shut his eyes and buried his face in Harry’s chest again. That voice berated him, over and over again – broken, wrong, pathetic – the words rang in his ears. He breathed Harry in – black pepper and cedar, sweat and sun-kissed skin – and breathed out.

“Okay,” he mumbled against his chest.

“Say it with me – you’re not broken.”

Draco hesitated. Then, “I’m not broken.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

Another pause. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“We’ll figure this out.”

“We’ll figure this out.”

“Gryffindor is better than Slytherin.”

Draco let out a surprised laugh. “Not in a million years, Potter.”

He knew then, as Harry’s rumbling chuckle filled his ears, that it didn’t matter that his body couldn’t, wouldn’t work the way he wanted it to. This was enough. Draco was enough for Harry. He wrapped his arms around Harry and settled against him with a shaky sigh. This was more than enough, because this was love.

**Author's Note:**

> Just as my Wolfstar fanfiction "No More Secrets" was based on my experience as a trans person, this is based off of my experience as someone on the asexual spectrum. I feel like being ace often isn't discussed or considered in depth, and I wanted to portray it being received in a healthy way, since most of the cases I've seen in fiction it isn't. Essentially, being asexual doesn't mean you're broken, or wrong. For some people, being ace is rooted in trauma, but for many of us, it is just the way we were born, and that's okay. We can still be accepted and loved for who we are by the people who care about us. Okay, I'll end my lecture here, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.


End file.
